AuthorTopic: Tech Bits: Is Skype the Future? (Read 2720 times)

As computers have become more powerful and taken ever greater roles in our daily lives, the way we have used them to communicate with others has grown and evolved. For many of us, we started out with email, and then as people began to spend more and more time in front of their computer, we shifted to instant messaging. Communication through text has disadvantages, however, and so numerous solutions have appeared to make the act of web-based communication more personal.

I haven't actually used Skype at all until just recently. Where I work is a relatively new company (5 years old) of about 100 employees and when I got there the management encouraged us to use Skype. I was skepticle at first, but it has turned out to be very convenient for telling if someone is there, sending useful text back and forth, or sending files to one another. The fact that we can use it to make free US calls for right now is of course beneficial to the company too.

What surprised me most about it is the quality of calls. I remember trying Net2Phone years ago. I had a broadband connection then too, but the quality was horrendous. Skype was quite the opposite.

I also decided to test the delay tonight. I called my friend on a cell phone 500 miles away from me in NC (she's in PA) and I just cranked my speakers. She said there was a delay of about 1 second. If you have ever talked you yourself on 2 cell phones (yes, I've tried it) you know the delay is about 1 second. So Skype was fairly dead on with its delivery of the call.